WINDMILL COUNTRY: 'Good crop' of wheat ready for harvest

Brandon Ripple is operating his father’s combine on the family farm east of Wall and 12 miles southeast of San Angelo. The Ripple Farm harvested irrigated wheat, which produced yields running from 59 to 74 bushels per acre.

Jerry Lackey/Special to the Standard-Times

Wheat produced on the Ripple Farm is being dumped into a grain hopper from the combine Tuesday afternoon. The grain had an average weight of 62 pounds per bushel.

Jerry Lackey/Special to the Standard-Times

SAN ANGELO, Texas - The amber waves of wheat stretches for miles across farmland throughout the Concho Valley, and this week's forecast of warm, sunny days are ideal for harvest time.

The Ripple Farm, east of Wall and about 12 miles southeast of San Angelo, has harvested its irrigated wheat crop, which produced yields running from 59 to 74 bushels per acre. The dryland wheat — crops that rely solely on rainfall — produced from 27 bushels to 35 bushels per acre. The average weight is around 62 pounds per bushel.

"Normally when we have a good crop like this, several things can happen," said Rodney Ripple. "Either a freeze, a hailstorm or low prices happens, and this year it's low prices."

The posted price for wheat was $3.45 per bushel earlier this week. Farmers tell me they need at least $5 to $6 per bushel just to break even.

Gary Speck, a Concho County rancher, said harvest has been completed on his family's wheat acreage, 10 miles north of Eden.

"The wheat yield averaged 57 bushels per acre on the ranch, but our best yield was a spot in a field near Melvin, where the combine registered 88 bushels per acre. However, that was only a couple acres in one field," he said.

David Holubec, who farms two miles south of Melvin, about 60 miles southeast of San Angelo, explained: "The fields in this area range from black loam deep bottom land to shallow sandy soil on the hilltops. The crops in the shallow dirt normally produces low yields compared to higher yields in the black soils."

Of the nearly 25 percent of harvested wheat in the Melvin and Salt Gap areas near the Concho-McCulloch county line, the yields are averaging from 40 bushels to 55 bushels per acre, Holubec said.

The bulk of wheat in the region is grown on dryland. Rainfall has come at the right times throughout the winter and provided good subsoil moisture during the growing season.

"The wheat has been slow in maturing this spring because of cool weather, but that's better for the wheat as it has higher test weight at harvest," Holubec said.

Combines are rolling in the Big Country from Abilene eastward into Callahan County and southward in the Lawn area in southeast Taylor County. Approximately 25 percent of the estimated yield of more than 1.8 million bushels in Taylor County had been harvested by Tuesday, said Robert Pritz, Taylor County AgriLife Extension agent.

"It appears that we will have about a 10 bushel-per- acre bump over the average of 25 bushels per acre," Pritz said. "Those fields that normally produce 20 bushels per acre are averaging 30 bushels, and those fields that do 30 are yielding 40 bushels per acre this year."

Pritz said the test weights for the most part are averaging around 63 pounds per bushel.

In the Winters and Wingate area about 50 miles northeast of San Angelo, early harvested wheat is ranging from 22 bushels to more than 70 bushels per acre, said Rick Minzenmayer, an entomologist in Ballinger, who also serves as the Texas AgriLife integrated pest manager for Runnels and Tom Green counties.

The majority of wheat in Runnels County and neighboring Taylor County is produced on dryland farms. The major wheat-growing region in Runnels County is in the Winters and Wingate areas.

Even though the classic El Niño weather pattern that started in the fall of 2009 has brought cool, wet conditions during the winter wheat growing season, the threat of hailstorms was always in the minds of every farmer.

Otherwise, there is always a disease problem.

Some of the older varieties of wheat had rust damage earlier in the growing season, because, in part, of damp weather, Minzenmayer said. Also, the Hessian fly damage is evident in many fields this year.

Texas wheat producers expect to harvest 122.5 million bushels, up from 61.3 million in 2009, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

Statewide yield is expected to average 35 bushels per acre, up 10 bushels from last year and up 5 bushels from two years ago. Harvested acreage for grain, at 3.5 million acres, is up 43 percent from 2009.

Production on the Northern High Plains is forecast at 55.6 million bushels, up 47 percent from last year. Winter wheat production in the Blacklands is forecast at 7.9 million bushels, up 7 percent from last year. The South Plains, around Lubbock, is estimated at 36.6 million bushels, up from 7.4 million bushels last year.

This year's wheat production across the nation is forecast at 1.46 billion bushels, according to the statistics service. Yield is expected to average 45.9 bushels per acre, 1.7 bushels more than a year ago. Acreage to be harvested for grain is expected to total 31.8 million acres.

Jerry Lackey writes about agriculture. Contact him at jlackey@wcc.net or 325-949-2291.